"Let no freedom be allowed to novelty, because it is not fitting that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture."
-- Pope Sixtus III

Friday, June 15, 2012

Some folks in the Washington, D.C., area are buzzing
about what they thought was a UFO atop a flatbed truck on the Capitol
Beltway.

Turns out the disc-shaped object was just a run-of-the-mill military drone.

MyFoxDC reports that
what drivers saw—and some photographed—around 11 p.m. Wednesday on
Interstate 270, and then later on Interstate 495, was an X-47B Unmanned
Combat Air System being transported from Edwards Air Force Base in
California to the Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland for
testing.

During its travels through the D.C. area, local station WTOP reported a flurry of activity on Twitter about the strange-looking object.

This not the first time a drone was mistaken for something alien.
Last year, a drone being transported by flatbed to Pax River for
practicing aircraft carrier takeoffs and landings was also mistaken for
a UFO, the Daily Caller reported.

Vogue editor and aspiring diplomat Anna Wintour added the role of interior decorator-in-chief to her titles this week by overseeing a decor overhaul at Sarah Jessica Parker’s luxe home before President Obama’s visit.

Wintour — who’s reportedly in the running for the US ambassadorship to Britain — was photographed with her daughter Bee Shaffer paying a visit to Parker and Matthew Broderick’s
West Village townhouse just as movers were hauling furniture in and out
to prep for yesterday’s $80,000-per-couple fund-raiser hosted by
Wintour and the “Sex and the City” star.

Sources said the fashion oracle wanted to clean out SJP’s “shabby
chic” furniture. One told us, “Anna was going crazy about the
decorating. She was having a lot furniture removed and sending all of
SJP’s tchotchkes upstairs.

“Some of the stuff in the house was shabby chic, and let’s just say, Anna wanted less shabby, and more chic,” the source added.

While calls for U.S. Attorney General Eric "Stonewall" Holder's resignation grow and the House GOP
gears up for a contempt vote next week, it's worth remembering how we
got into this mess. In two words: feckless bipartisanship.

"I like Barack Obama and want to help him if I can." That was Utah GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch in January 2009, just weeks before the Senate voted on President Obama's attorney general nominee, Eric Holder.
Right out of the gate, upon Obama's election in November 2008, Hatch
signaled that he would greenlight the administration's top law enforcer.

"I start with the premise that the president deserves the benefit of
the doubt," the six-term incumbent Hatch told The Hill newspaper. "I
don't think politics should be played with the attorney general."

Utah voters, mark those words. Bending to bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake — and ignoring the obvious consequences — is playing politics.

And, conservatives, please remember the actions of all 19 Republican
senators who ignored Holder's abominable career as a political fixer and
confirmed him. "I found Mr. Holder to be a good listener, which is an
important prerequisite for any good leader," Missouri GOP
Sen. Kit Bond explained in support of the nomination. "I believe him
when he says that he's willing to take good ideas from wherever they
come."

It's not like these GOP
enablers weren't warned over and over about Holder's shady judgment and
questionable ethics. The 2002 House Committee on Government Reform's
report on the Clinton-era Marc Rich pardon scandal spelled out Holder's
willingness to put political ambition above the rule of law. Then-Deputy
Attorney General Holder and former White House counsel Jack Quinn, who was representing the fugitive financier Rich, worked together to cut the Justice Department out of the process.

The duo ensured "that the Justice Department,
especially the prosecutors of the Southern District of New York, did
not have an opportunity to express an opinion on the Rich pardon before
it was granted." The report noted further that "Holder failed to inform
the prosecutors under him that the Rich pardon was under consideration,
despite the fact that he was aware of the pardon effort for almost two
months before it was granted."

Holder admitted that he allowed his judgment to be overridden by crony political considerations. He told GOP
senators he had learned from his "mistake" and that it would make him a
better attorney general. But it wasn't just one "mistake."

Holder pandered to leftist special interests in engineering clemency
for 16 members of the violent terrorist groups Fuerzas Armadas de
Liberacion Nacional (FALN) and Los Macheteros — linked by the FBI to
more than 130 bombings and six murders. He gave the terrorists
unprecedented access to phone calls and consultations as they negotiated
their freedom. He hid behind executive privilege covers when asked by
victims' families to explain the decision process. And as a partner at
Covington and Burling, the powerhouse D.C.- and N.Y.-based law firm
infamous for representing Gitmo detainees, Holder's opposition to the
jihadi detention center raised bright red conflict-of-interest flags.

Is it any wonder that such a serial conniver would now be embroiled
in multiple scandals involving the endangerment of national security?
And that he would name old pals to run interference for him in his time
of need?

To investigate his department's bloody malfeasance in the Fast and
Furious gunwalking scandal, Holder appointed acting DOJ Inspector
General Cynthia A. Schnedar. She worked under Holder in the 1990s and
had co-filed several legal briefs with him. Schnedar is in hot water for
having released secret Fast and Furious audiotapes to the U.S.
Attorney's Office in Phoenix before reviewing them. The tapes somehow
found their way into the hands of the local ATF office. Both are targets
of congressional probes.

To investigate self-aggrandizing White House leaks on jihadi kill
lists and computer viruses targeting Iran's nuclear facilities, Holder
named two political appointees. One is Ronald Machen, an Obama donor, a
transition team leader and a U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., who
formerly worked under Holder.

Blind Democrats are outraged at questions about the independence of
Holder's appointees. Johnny-come-lately Republicans are demanding
special prosecutors and balking at Holder's arrogance, obstructionism
and wanton disregard for American security and safety. Note: Two of the
loudest voices belong to Sens. McCain and Graham, who both approved
Holder's nomination.

Joseph Connor, son of FALN murder victim Frank Connor, was right. In
January 2009, he spoke from pain-filled experience: "Holder clearly does
not have the judgment, character or values to be attorney general." GOP surrender-ism cost more innocent lives. For the sake of the victims, let this be a lesson learned — and not repeated again.

Amid the bustle of President Obama’s surprise stop for
barbecue Wednesday the White House apparently overlooked one key detail:
the bill.Celebrating Father’s Day early, the president had lunch with two
service members and two local barbers at Kenny’s BBQ on Capitol Hill.As the group chatted about fatherhood, the president enjoyed a
steaming plate of pork ribs with hot sauce, collard greens, red beans
and rice and cornbread.

The bill for the president and his four guests was $55.58, but was left unpaid at the point of sale, according to pool reports.

Obama representatives settled this particular debt by the end of the
day, and the servicemen (at least during the meal) seemed to be enjoying
their time.

However, at least if the CBS video of the event is any indication,
the president spent a significant percentage of the meal praising the
values of barber shops– though perhaps his praise of the military was
just not as heavily featured in the clip.

“The reason the two older gentlemen are here,” the president told the
servicemen, “is, I was mentioning, is– barber shops are where a lot of
men still come. And we want to work with them…to figure out how we can
get better information to fathers about resources that are available for
them, where they can find job training programs, where they can find
[support] groups for fathers, because the more information we‘re getting
out there to folks about how they’re taking responsibility for their
kids…it makes a huge difference.”

And while no one is against helping fathers take responsibility for
their children, are barbers really the ones to be praising in the
company of two servicemen, particularly on flag day?

Far apart on so many issues, Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas almost
certainly see eye to eye on the Egyptian presidential election.
Both would like Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force chief who served as
Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister, beat the Muslim Brotherhood's
anointed candidate, Mohamed Mursi, in the June 16-17 ...

More than two-thirds of Americans—including half of Republicans—still
blame former President George W. Bush for the country's economic ills, according to a new Gallup poll released on Thursday, hours before President Barack Obama was to deliver a high-stakes speech defending his handling of the weak economy.

What one might call the blame gap has narrowed considerably: When
Gallup first asked Americans in July 2009 whom they blamed for the poor
economy, 80 percent laid a great deal or a moderate amount of blame on
Bush, and only 32 percent blamed Obama. The current numbers show 68
percent of the public blames the former president while 52 percent say
Obama deserves the blame. (The numbers total more than 100 percent
because the question was not "which one do you blame more," but how much
blame each president deserves individually.)The Democratic president has crisscrossed the country in recent
months pleading for patience from voters still struggling in the anemic
recovery and grappling with stubbornly high unemployment above 8
percent. In his speeches, Obama makes a point of blaming Bush and
Republicans in general for the 2007-2008 meltdown and warns that Mitt
Romney's economic program resembles the Bush approach "on steroids."

Among independents, who often play a role in deciding elections, 51
percent assign Obama a great deal or a moderate amount of blame, while
47 percent say he deserves not much or no blame at all. Meanwhile, 67
percent of independents say Bush bears a great deal or a moderate amount
of the fault. Only 32 percent exonerate him in whole or in part. The
survey, conducted June 7-10, includes one eye-popping statistic: While
83 percent of Republicans say Obama deserves a great deal or moderate
amount of blame, 49 percent of them believe Bush deserves the same.
Democrats are more likely to exonerate Obama. Eight in 10 say he
deserves not much or none of the blame, while 9 in 10 say Bush deserves a
great deal or a moderate amount. The poll had an error margin of plus
or minus 4 percentage points.

"Americans continue to have more negative than positive views of the current economy and the direction in which it is headed, which generally does not bode well for Obama," Gallup notes.

"Still, 68 percent of Americans say former President Bush should be
given a great deal or a moderate amount of blame for the nation's
economic woes—substantially more than say the same about Obama. This
suggests that Obama's argument that he is on the right track and needs
more time to turn the economy around could fall on receptive ears,
particularly those of independents," Gallup suggests.

The U.S. Air Force is standing ready for this week's much anticipated return to Earth of a robotic space plane that has spent more than a year in orbit on a secret mission.

Air Force officials say landing day for the unmanned X-37B space plane is imminent, and could occur on Friday (June 15). But weather conditions at its intended landing site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, as well as other factors, will determine when the spacecraft's will ultimately land.

"Team Vandenberg is prepared to safely receive the X-37B at a moment's notice," Air Force Lt. Austin Fallin told SPACE.com in an email this week. "Exact landing date and time depend on weather and technical considerations."

The X-37B spacecraft's landing
window opened on June 11 and runs through June 18, with Friday being
the next opportunity, Fallin said. The exact nature of the space plane's
mission is classified, so aside from a brief May 30 statement
announcing the upcoming landing in the mid-June timeframe, Air Force
officials have remained mum on re-entry details. [Photos: Air Force's 2nd Secret X-37B Mission]

"More information will be released as it becomes available," Fallin said.

The X-37B space plane set to land this week is known as the Orbital
Test Vehicle 2 (OTV-2) and looks much like a smaller version of NASA's
reusable space shuttles. Unlike NASA's shuttles, the OTV-2 is
completely unmanned and is powered by a solar panel that allows it to
stay in orbit for months at a time.

Air Force officials have said the estimated mission length for its
X-37B space planes (there are currently two) is about 270 days, but the
OTV-2 mission has far outlasted that timeframe. The OTV-2 mission
launched into orbit on March 5, 2011 and has racked up more than 460
days in orbit so far.

The Air Force's X-37B space planes
are built by Boeing and originally began as a NASA test program that
shifted into the U.S military's control in 2006, first to DARPA and then
to the Air Force,
due to funding issues. Each X-37B spacecraft is about 29 feet long (8.8
meters) 15 feet wide (4.5 m), and has a payload bay about the size of a
pickup truck bed.

The spacecraft are launched into orbit atop unmanned Atlas 5 rockets
and are designed to guide themselves back to Earth on autopilot by
re-entering the atmosphere and landing on a runway at Vandenberg. The
OTV-2 mission and its predecessor were launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The first X-37B space plane, OTV-1, launched in 2010 and spent 225 days
in space. This OTV-2 mission has more than doubled the duration of that
debut flight. Air Force officials have said they intend to launch the
OTV-1 vehicle on another test flight soon, possibly as soon as this
fall.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

"Aides say Mr. Obama has several reasons for becoming so immersed in
lethal counterterrorism operations. A student of writings on war by
Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, [Ack! I just wet myself! - F.G.] he believes that he should take moral
responsibility for such actions. And he knows that bad strikes can
tarnish America’s image and derail diplomacy."

Florida on Monday sued the US to get access to a
federal immigration and citizenship database, which it says will help
it remove noncitizens from the voter rolls. The US is set to sue Florida
to halt its purge.

Florida's
assertion that it has discovered nearly 100 noncitizens on its voter
rolls – half of whom may have voted in the past – is not stopping the US Department of Justice
from warning the state off its current purge of registration rolls,
saying the move is illegal and its results not worth the risk of
disenfranchising minority voters.

FloridaGov. Rick Scott (R) and a Justice Department attorney are filing dueling lawsuits over the matter, in a state that could be crucial to the outcome of the 2012 presidential election, just as it was in the 2000 contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
A preelection voter list purge occurred in Florida in that election,
too, striking off 57,000 ex-felons (including 3 percent of the total
black electorate); afterwards, thousands of votes, predominantly cast by
minority voters, were discounted by state election officials.

“What’s going on in Florida is indicative of a battle going on across the country … where Republicans claim this is necessary to protect against voter fraud
and minority groups and the Justice Department claim that it’s a thinly
disguised way of putting undue burdens on minority voters,” says
historian Allan Lichtman of American University,
an expert on voting rights and author of “White Protestant Nation: The
Rise of the American Conservative Movement.” “And, certainly, Florida
does not have clean hands when it comes to these kinds of processes.”President Obama barely won Florida in 2008, with 51 percent of the vote.

Appearing on CNN on Tuesday, Governor Scott said the fact that Florida officials have identified 87 noncitizens on the rolls after only a partial search justifies the state’s effort to purge the voter rolls.
(Five hundred names identified as suspect have been confirmed as
legitimate voters.) The state says it has a list of 180,000 names it
wants to doublecheck, and has begun to check 2,700 of those, although
election officials in several key counties, including Miami-Dade, have refused to continue the purge given repeated federal requests to cease and desist.

Voters
flagged as potentially ineligible have several venues for due process,
including the ability to vote using a provisional ballot pending proof
of citizenship, state officials say.

On Monday, Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner sued the US Department of Homeland Security
to gain access to a federal immigration and citizenship database that
he says could help clear up confusion about particular voters’
eligibility. Federal officials say that the database isn't designed to
"hunt" for ineligible voters and that Florida
isn't supplying enough personal data about prospective fraudulent
voters to get the information from the database the state is seeking.

“We
want all US citizens to vote, [but] we don’t want non-US citizens to
vote,” Scott said on CNN Tuesday. “Here’s what we know: We know
individuals are voting in our state illegally.”

In a terse letter
Monday announcing legal action against the state, Assistant US Attorney
Thomas Perez said Florida’s program is “faulty” and is being undertaken
too near to an election. In the letter, Mr. Perez noted that “Congress
enacted the National Voter Registration Act
against a historical backdrop in this country in which many purge
programs were initiated close to elections, which prevented or deterred
eligible citizens from casting ballots in those elections. Where the
registration status of eligible voters is questioned close to an
election, it creates significant confusion for both voters and election
officials.”

“The significant problems you are encountering in
administering this new program are of your own creation,” Perez wrote.
“Please immediately cease this unlawful conduct."

While the purge
has political motivations, some experts say Scott’s effort has partly
confirmed a suspicion among some Americans that the voter registration
system is flawed. That suspicion that has given rise in recent years to
new voter ID laws in 30 states, primarily those controlled by
Republicans, prompting challenges from the DOJ in several.

For other Americans, whiffs of Jim Crow and minority disenfranchisement are in the air. Most surnames on a partial list of suspect names have so far been Hispanic.

So
far, the state has not been shown to have wrongly stripped anyone of
the right to vote. Last week, Andre Fiset, a Canadian citizen who lives
in Hollywood, Fla.,
was removed from the voter rolls after the state suggested that he had
voted in elections before 2006, which Mr. Fiset denies. It's a state and
federal felony to commit voter fraud, but Florida doesn’t have hard
records to prove that Fiset did vote.

Still, Florida officials are
scoring some points in the battle over the voter-roll purge. “So far,
there’s less evidence of suppression and more evidence of fraud,” writes
Miami Herald reporter Marc Caputo.

Ed Rogers, of The Insiders blog at Washington's other newspaper, thinks the race for President is down to six states partly because The Money Raiser From The High-Yellow Lagoon isn't raking in the big bucks this time around.

President Obama keeps blaming former president George
W. Bush for our economic problems because he thinks enough people will
believe this excuse. His latest attempt to distract voters is even more
insulting. Trying to escape a referendum on himself, Obama now says the
election is about who wants more firefighters, teachers and police at
the local level. Yes, Mitt Romney is the enemy of those brave souls and
Obama is their savior. Please. Does the race have to be this dishonest
this early? Is Obama so exhausted that the best he can do is hide behind
hometown heroes while he denies the failure of his economic plans and
the harm caused by his growing deficits?

This fits with Obama declaring that Republicans are waging a "war on
women" and his White House saying Republicans are cruel to poor
children. People don't buy it. It's over the top.

I've been saying it is too early for Obama to panic. But if his
campaign isn't more serious than this and if he can't honestly talk
about our problems and his plans to solve them, then he might as well
try some panic. Panic could not produce a worse result than the hollow,
dishonest campaign he is running now.

As Obama and his message get smaller, I think the race is narrowing
to fewer states than most analysts might believe. We will probably know
for sure after the Fourth of July, but I think we will have a six-state
campaign starting pretty soon. They will be: Colorado (9), Iowa (6),
Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), Ohio (18) and Wisconsin (10), for a
combined 53 electoral votes. In the next few weeks, I expect it will
become clear to the Obama campaign that Florida, North Carolina and
Virginia are lost and not worth the fight. I thought Carter was bluffing
when he talked about Obama's money woes, but it is looking like Obama
really won't have the money to keep as many states as he would like
competitive. We will have a relatively long campaign, fought on a small
field. Given the lack of creativity, imagination and honesty that the
Obama campaign has been able to sustain so far, his operatives should
fear that the president will wear out his welcome when he has to
campaign for so many days in so few places.

Hee-hee. "Jug-ears fatigue".

I assume a major strategic overhaul is underway at the Obama campaign headquarters.

In a new report released by James Carville’s liberal nonprofit public opinion research group, Democracy Corps, data from focus groups shows that Barack Obama is taking the wrong approach to the campaign by focusing on economic issues.

The co-authors of the report, Carville, Stan Greenberg, and Erica Seifert, claim that the Obama
campaign must “move to a new narrative” in order to be successful in
November. The authors use the first person plural “we” throughout the
report to describe Democratic efforts.

The current campaign is focused on success in the economic recovery,
but Carville’s group says the strategy is “wrong” and “will fail.” The
only reason Obama is keeping up in the campaign is because voters
perceive Romney as “out of touch with ordinary people.”

The authors recommend that Obama show more empathy for the struggles
of the middle class. “These voters want to know that he understands the
struggle of working families and has plans to make things better,”
according to the report.

The report is based on findings from several focus groups of independent voters in both Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“These voters are not convinced that we are headed in the right
direction…and the current narrative about progress just misses the
opportunity to connect and point forward,” continues the report.

In tests done as part of the focus groups, Obama campaign ads that
highlight job growth and economic recovery during the last four years
did not even win over voters who already supported Obama.

While most of the voters in the focus groups were forceful in their
complaints about Romney’s lack of connection with the working class,
they seemed to agree that he would do a better job than Obama on the
economy.

Russian ex-spy Anna Chapman has walked a Turkish catwalk in a long red dress at a fashion show, flanked by two men posing as secret service agents in black suit and sunglasses.

Hikmet Eraslan said Wednesday his Dosso Dossi clothing company
donated to Chapman's charity foundation for children with poor eyesight
in Volgograd in return for her appearance last Friday.

The 30-year-old Chapman was deported from the United States in 2010
along with nine other Russian sleeper agents. She appeared on the runway
in the Mediterranean city of Antalya, a top Turkish vacation
destination.

Chapman has been keeping a high profile since her deportation to
Russia, modeling, editing a magazine, giving lectures and running the
foundation.

Several media outlets have again pulled or edited already-published articles about the activities of President Barack Obama’s daughter, even though the stories appeared to pose no active security risk to the first family.

On Thursday, 14-year-old Malia Obama attended a concert by the British boy band One Direction at the Patriot Center in Fairfax, Va., flanked by Secret Service agents who attempted unsuccessfully to blend in with the crowd of mostly pre-teen girls.

At one point during the concert, the boy bands’ teen heartthrobs
sang, “You’re insecure, Dunno what for, You’re turning heads when you
walk through the door” — words that managed to take on some meaning for
Malia, who looked less than enthused by the presence of multiple
middle-aged federal agents at her side.

On Friday, the story was picked up by The Huffington Post, which ran the headline, “Malia Obama, One Direction Fan: First Daughter Attends Boy Band Concert with Secret Service in Tow.”

Within hours, the entire post was scrubbed from the site without explanation, and the post’s URL was hastily changed to direct users to the site’s celebrity section.The next day, news aggregation website Buzzfeed
ran a story on the event, accompanied by a picture of Malia in
attendance at the concert. The headline was “Malia Obama Goes to the One
Direction Concert with the Secret Service,” and the story’s picture
showed Malia standing awkwardly in front of a scowling male Secret Service agent, with what appear to be two additional female Secret Service agents standing to her right.

By Sunday, the headline had changed to “Secret Service Agent Does Not Appear To Enjoy One Direction Concert,” and Buzzfeed had cropped the photo
to remove Malia entirely, leaving only a narrow shot of the unhappy
Secret Service agent. Again, the author of the post, Hillary Reinsberg,
left no explanation for scrubbing Malia from the story and the picture,
nor did she provide any indication to readers that it had occurred.

“I was expecting a little more than a tiny picture of half of a guys
face,” Buzzfeed commenter Kyle Thompson wrote on Saturday, after the
bizarre change had gone into effect.

“They had originally run a story about Malia Obama attending a One
Direction concert, but apparently changed their minds when one of the
first comments pointed out that journalistic protocol is that the
President’s children be left alone, unless they are related to a story
about the President in some way,” another commenter, Ryan Johnson,
explained. “One of the clumsier things I’ve seen, well, ever.”

Major outlets like the Associated Press and AFP did not cover Malia’s
appearance at the concert at all, while community-driven sites such as
TMZ and The Blaze have kept their stories about the event posted,
unaltered.

On Saturday, the Associated Press reported that the first family was
attending yet another concert — this time, they took in some Beyonce.
Many sites, including The Huffington Post, omitted any mention of the Obamas in stories about the concert.

The media have run interference for the first family in the past. In
March, several news sites — including The Huffington Post — scrubbed
stories about Malia’s planned spring break vacation in Mexico with a
dozen friends and 25 Secret Service agents.

At the time, the White House admitted it had asked that the stories be removed only for security reasons.

“From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked
news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they
are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest,”
Kristina Schake, Communications Director to the First Lady, told
Politico.

However, unlike the spring break stories, which were published in
advance of Malia’s trip and may have posed a threat, the articles about
the first daughter’s appearance at the One Direction concert were
published only after the fact.

Additionally, despite repeatedly saying that the first family is off-limits to reporters, the Obama campaign has used images of the president’s daughters in advertisements urging the public to “help the Obamas stand up for working Americans.”

Update (5:23 p.m.): After this story was posted,
Buzzfeed updated its story with the following: “NOTE: This story has
been edited in keeping with the tradition of respecting the privacy of
presidents’ children, after both BuzzFeed commenters and a White House
official, Semonti Stephens, pointed to the longstanding practice.”

Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith told The Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle on Twitter
that “the point” of the original story was never the first family.

“We thought the notion of these agents being dragged to one direction
was funny — that was always the point of the item,” he tweeted. “We
heard immediately from commenters, colleagues, and the WH, and decided
to do it on our own.”

When asked to confirm that the White House was behind the removal of
the Buzzfeed story, Smith criticized Boyle for pressing him.

“Now you’re back to just trolling! It was a good media item though,” Smith said.

It is one of the biggest relics left behind by the Nazis, perched on one of Germany's most spectacular beaches, and after years of neglect it is getting a new lease of life.

The historic dormitory complex at Prora, built between 1936 and 1939, sprawls nearly five kilometres (three miles) along a choice slab of Baltic Sea coastline.

Built as one of the so-called Strength Through Joy camps set up by
the Nazis for the party faithful, it was to sleep up to 20,000 Germans
in a pioneering attempt at mass tourism 300 kilometres north of Berlin.

The drive to offer recreation and hearty exercise was coupled with a
desire to build loyalty and devotion to the Nazis among the working
class, with ideological teaching on site.

The complex was to include a cinema, a theatre, a banquet hall for 25,000 people and two swimming pools.

But World War II put an end to the scheme and work was never completed.

When the Soviet army seized control of eastern Germany at the end of
the war, the camp was turned to military use and did not appear on
travel maps.

Since the collapse of communist East Germany
in 1989, the Prora complex has sat desolate and largely empty,
gradually deteriorating while the question of its future use remained
unanswered.

The building is, alongside the Nazis' Nuremberg party rally grounds,
Germany's most imposing architectural relic of the Third Reich.

But because of its size and state of disrepair, it had been a hard sell in the post-reunification years.

"After the fall of the Berlin Wall, following the brief stay of the
German military here, we only had one idea in mind: sell the place,"
Sabine Sakuth, a guide at the Prora museum, told AFP.

"From the start, there haven't been any real plans for it. We don't manage our heritage very well."

Failing to find a buyer for the whole complex, the state has been forced to try to sell it piece by piece.

Sakuth noted that part of the problem is financial -- the disused
concrete-block lodgings are crumbling and would-be investors are limited
in what they can do with the white elephant, which is protected by
rigid environmental and historical regulations.

And despite the valuable land the complex sits on in one of Germany's
hottest tourist destinations, tearing it down is not an option.

"It is an issue that gives me a stomach ache," admits local mayor Karsten Schneider.

Only one project thus far has got off the ground -- last year a youth hostel with 400 beds opened in one section of the complex.

Two years of building work were necessary to make this still
little-known place inviting, at a cost of 27 million euros ($34
million), to which the European Union kicked in development funds.

Now the spot welcomes students and families with children, even
boasting wireless Internet, and 820 new windows look out onto the sea
and the lush forest to the back of the complex.

"People are very, very curious and want to know what happened here --
it's great," said Dennis Brosseit, who runs the youth hostel.

"A little like now, when you see young children running in the
courtyards -- it's brilliant. Seeing this big block starting to live
again is terrific."

And in March, a Berlin investor plunked down 2.75 million euros for
one of the complex's five blocks and plans to convert it into a hotel,
spa and holiday apartment development, with work to start this month.

Local residents are sceptical about its prospects due to the recent explosion in holiday lodgings in the area.

"The Nazis wanted to have 20,000 beds here. I think with 3,000 beds
we have already reached the limit," Schneider, the mayor, said, adding
that he would like to see a tourism institute or an oceanography academy
instead of more hotel rooms.

- Yahoo!'s The Ticket

The girls [and those Penile-Americans who emulate them] have won. The fierce freedom fighters of the Great Plains will soon be forgotten. Their memories will be replaced by colorful blankets, Ward Churchill, Elizabeth Warren, and slot machines.

Voters in North Dakota on Tuesday overwhelmingly endorsed a proposal to abolish the state university's "Fighting Sioux" nickname and Indian head logo, banned under a national college sports policy that deems such symbols as racially offensive.

More than 67 percent of voters supported the move that will allow the University of North Dakota to end its use of the nickname and logo - based on a Native American caricature - in order to avoid possible sanctions by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

However, supporters of the symbol have said they will continue their
fight to retain the "Fighting Sioux" name and logo after years of
appealing to alumni and to the state Legislature, which just last year
passed a law to keep the images, only to then reverse itself with a
repeal.

The university's alumni association and foundation had stayed neutral
on the topic for decades, but in early February stepped in to support
retiring the nickname and logo, spending $250,000 on the issue.

"The issue wasn't preference. If that were the case than clearly the
name would be staying," said Tim O'Keefe, executive vice president and
CEO of the alumni association and foundation. "It was about the
significant price the University of North Dakota athletic program would
pay under NCAA sanctions."

The NCAA, which governs college sports, adopted a policy in 2005 to
bar images considered offensive by some Native American groups, but
allows schools to use them if they gain approval from namesake groups.

It bars schools that don't from hosting championship events or wearing uniforms with the images during NCAA playoffs.

Retention of the name and logo could also make it harder to recruit
players, complete athletic conference affiliations and schedule some
opponents.

O'Keefe, who played hockey at North Dakota from 1967 to 1971, said
the debate "has brought great division to a passionate and loyal alumni
and friend base."

The NCAA had given North Dakota three years to obtain permission from
two namesake tribes. One tribe approved, but the second never voted on
the request, forcing the university to prepare to abolish the nickname
and logo.

North Dakota lawmakers did intervene, passing a law in early 2011
that required the university to keep the name and logo, but repealed it
months later under the threat of NCAA sanctions. Nickname supporters
then gathered enough signatures to force the statewide vote held on
Tuesday.

Indian mascots, nicknames and logos have been used widely in U.S.
sports, and approval of their continued use or retirement by major
universities has been mixed.

Under pressure from the NCAA, the University of Illinois retired its
Chief Illiniwek mascot, who danced on the field at football games, but
the namesake Seminole tribe approved Florida State University's
continued presentation of a mascot who wears an Indian headdress and
rides horseback at football games.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

The Steelers finally made their new
offensive coordinator available to the media Tuesday. But rather than
listen to Todd Haley talk about David Johnson’s blocking technique, I
opted for something a little deeper.

OK, a lot deeper.

I opted for a chat with Troy Polamalu.

I’ve spent nearly a quarter-century in this
business and hope to spend a quarter-century more, but I doubt I’ll find
an athlete as fascinating or as humble as this one.

Images of Polamalu’s first training camp, in
2003, remain vivid. He’d arrived late because of contract issues. He
said he felt sick to his stomach on the all-night flight from Los
Angeles and “ashamed” when he showed up.

Early on, he often sat alone in the Latrobe
dining room, ice packs strapped to his hamstrings. So clearly the new
guy. Painfully shy. Desperately wanting to contribute.

Now look.

The man turned 31 in April. Is it possible?
He is entering his 10th season, headed fast toward the twilight of a
magnificent career. If there is any justice, someone already has begun
to carve the hair into Polamalu’s Hall-of-Fame bust (a job, after all,
that could take years).

Polamalu broke personal tradition to attend
organized team activities this spring, working around his training
schedule with Marv Marinovich (Todd’s father) in California because he
sensed a calling.

He’s one of the old guys now. His wisdom and
guidance are needed. That is why you find him introducing himself to
anonymous recruits in the Steelers’ South Side dining room. As if they
don’t know who he is.

“More than any other year, the face of this franchise has changed,” Polamalu said. “We lost a lot of great leadership.”

Our conversation veered in various
directions. There was no rigid plan. Polamalu’s at his best, on and off
the field, when he is free to cover ground like only he can.

We talked about football, of course, but
mostly as a vehicle to propel us toward infinitely more important
topics. Like this little doozy: How does a man maintain his spiritual
life amid the trappings of NFL fame and fortune?

“I don’t know if I’m successful at that,”
Polamalu said. “But to me there is no greater arena to culture that. You
face so many passions. You’re fighting ego, pride, avarice. Obviously
this business is filled with a lot of temptations. But it’s the best
place, I feel, to overcome them.”

Polamalu has looked closely at the personal
struggles of transcendent athletes such as Michael Jordan, Walter
Payton, Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali.

“It takes a tremendous struggle to try to
stay together (as a family) in this sort of environment, especially when
you want to be at the peak of it,” he said.

“Obviously it’s a struggle
on my family. But my wife (Theodora) is so amazing in how she helps me
and just leads our family. I’m so blessed to have that.”

Other topics ...

• His initial trip, last summer, to his
ancestral home of American Samoa, where he plans to run a football camp
for years to come: “You know, we had 600 kids on a football field. Some
of them didn’t have shoes. Just to see the passion in these kids, it was
really, really awesome. The whole island is officially like a Steeler
island. All 600 kids had Terrible Towels.”

• The suicide of fellow Samoan and USC
alum Junior Seau, who was a friend, though not a close one: “The day
after (Seau’s death), my family sat down with his mother, his father,
his older brother, who he was really close with. We did the traditional
Samoan ceremonies, what’s proper after a death. I just felt so sorry for
the community that surrounded Junior. But it also should put things in
perspective, just to be thankful for what we have.”

• The aftermath of Seau’s death: “I felt
horrible for his mother. For the family’s sake, I hope they find
something wrong with his brain because I can imagine, as a parent that
has a child commit suicide, you would feel like you failed. I don’t
know.”

• The palpable fear that greets him every
game day: “People are paralyzed on a football field. People die ... You
just never know when it’s going to be your last moment. I was the kind
of guy who would never talk to my wife on game day.

Now I’m the guy
who’s like, ‘I love you.’ I want my children to know I love them because
I don’t know what’s going to happen out there. I’m not trying to play
the martyr here. I love football. It’s something we choose to do. We all
know how much of a gamble it is to play this game.”

Polamalu says people often ask how many more years he will play. His customary answer is short, but predictably deep:

“I’ve never thought about the end of my
career. I’ve had this growing motto in my life to live day to day — and
when you live day to day, it’s hard to talk years.”

About Me

First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct.
"My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up.
What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.